PSGY4009

Q+A about assessment, the GLM in more detail

Denis Schluppeck

2022-11-07

Today

Assessment

• A bit more detail on the written assessment
• General advice on writing, structure

The General Linear Model (GLM)

• intuition / non-mathematical explanation
• some of the nitty-gritty (in matlab)
• demo in fsl

Learning objectives

By the end of the lecture you should:

• know what’s expected in coursework
• have all the information to get started on assessment
• understand the GLM in principle
• appreciate some of the technical details of GLM analysis

Assessment

• Written assignment (max 3000 words) including a 250 word abstract.

• Details on moodle (2022/23).

The written assignment for this module is an essay about how functional magnetic resonance imaging and/or brain stimulation can be used to study different neuroscience questions. It must cover at least two topics and/or methods from the course.

Not just a literature review

One aim of the assignment is to make you think about the methodological choices the experimenters have to make. After a brief summary of the state of the literature in your area, there should be therefore be a component that talks about how you might extend some previous findings.

On moodle

There are some suggestions for how you can tackle each section in turn

overall word limit, 3000w - stick to this limit)

• Abstract (maximum 250 words. stick to this limit)
• Introduction (suggested ~500-750 words)
• Proposed experiment + methods (suggested ~500-1000 words)
• Expected results (suggested ~250 words)
• Conclusion / Discussion (suggested ~500-1000 words)
• References / Citations (no word limit)

Clear writing

Content

The content of your coursework is (obviously) important - topic choice - methodological details included - facts correct?

… but writing!

• clear, concise, economic
• line of argument?
• structure easy to follow
• …

Strunk & White - Elements of Style

If you haven’t read this little book (26 pages), take the time!

free online PDF of the book

The GLM - a quick walk-through

Some notes for my demo

cd ~/projects/hands-on-brain-data
julia
# using Pluto
# Pluto.run()
# "what_is_linearReg.jl"

in matlab

Some notes for my demo

cd ~/projects/hands-on-brain-data
cd data
X = load('design-3.txt')
y = load('timecourse.txt')
X\y
% regress(), pinv()

in fsl

cd ~/projects/hands-on-brain-data
cd data
fsleyes filtered_func_data
fsl &
# simple block design ... stats: 6, (12, 12, 12)

in fsl/fsleyes

Hope you found this helpful.

See you soon!

Colophon

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